


never ever ever (back together)

by susiecarter



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Communication Failure, Extra Treat, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Making Up, Morning Sex, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 20:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15396447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Ten years ago, Nate and Jake were something to each other. Maybe. But it didn't end well and they're done with it, and it's not like it matters now. They're not even friends anymore, and they definitely aren't getting back together.Definitely.





	never ever ever (back together)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



> I took your prompts about Nate's professionalism failing in the face of mourning, post-movie feelings about Nate's injuries, and victory celebrations going a different direction than anticipated and kind of stirred, days4daisy, plus or minus a bunch of my own headcanon and some missing scenes. ... Basically you gave me a great excuse to write the (mostly) canon-compliant PR:U fic about these guys that I wanted to write ever since I saw the movie, and I shamelessly took advantage—but I hope you enjoy the result, and that you've had a fantastic RMSE! :D
> 
> The canonical character death tag is for Mako; title borrowed from Taylor Swift. (It was only supposed to be a working title, and then it stuck. Oops.)

 

 

It didn't take long for people to catch on to the pattern. As the required age for entry into the jaeger pilot training program got younger and younger, it started happening more often. And it made sense, after all: when you were sixteen, seventeen, and drifting with somebody for the first time, somebody who was compatible in a way nobody else had been for you, it was intense. It felt serious, meaningful, profound. It gave you a connection like nothing else.

By the time Nate had joined up, there was a name for it. More than one—the official name, clinical, was "drift-induced limerence", and "jaegerpated" had already fallen out of style among the cadets and gotten replaced by "driftbrained". They got lectured about it during orientation, had a couple pages on it included in the data files their program-issued tablets came with in the root directory. It was normal, expected. Something their supervisors would be looking out for and making note of, like drift exhaustion or neural destabilization—but only if you couldn't handle it, only if it was causing problems.

It wasn't a big deal, because it didn't last. It wasn't supposed to last.

Just Nate's luck, that he'd turn out to be the exception to the rule.

 

*

 

He knows Jake's coming to Moyulan before it happens.

About half an hour before it happens, admittedly, but that's fine. It's not a problem. This isn't anything Nate needs more than half an hour to be prepared for. Why would it be? He's a ranger; he's gotten himself in gear for situations a lot more dangerous than Jake Pentecost in a lot less time. This is nothing.

He's a professional, and Jake is—whatever Jake is now, but the point is: they aren't sixteen anymore. It's been ten years. What happened back then is behind them, and now they aren't anything to each other except a couple shatterdome personnel who happen to both be stationed at Moyulan. It's fine.

And then he hears the announcement from Flight Control over the shatterdome speakers, that the transport's touched down, and he takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulders and then starts walking across the tarmac.

Everything's fine, he reminds himself. This is not a problem. He's done this part a thousand times, crossing the landing zones to meet a transport, walking recruits to the barracks for orientation. And there's no reason this time should be any different, because Jake—because _Pentecost_ is just another ranger, and Namani is just another cadet, and Nate has this under control.

And then he sees Jake.

For a second, Jake almost doesn't look real. It's sunny out here, the tarmac just starting to heat up and fill the air with haze, and it's—it's _Jake_ , jesus. Nate keeps his stride even, his face blank, but it's a hell of an effort; Mako talks to him about Jake sometimes, yeah, but she hasn't been taking him aside to show him Jake's latest mug shots or whatever. Ten years, and Jake looks so different and so much the same. Nate had half-hoped he wouldn't even recognize Jake, that the memory of Jake at sixteen would turn out to have been tattered and distorted, a mirage that Nate could finally dismiss.

But it's not like that at all. It's Jake—Jake, right in front of him again, and Nate at least manages to make himself come to a stop outside touching distance, because he can't say for certain he wouldn't reach out if he could, just to make sure Jake's actually there.

There, looking right at him, and it turns out Nate still wants him so bad it makes his breath come short.

Fuck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was a thing. Everybody knew about it. The younger cadets were when they got in the program, the better they were as pilots—and the younger they partnered up, the smoother the handshake, the deeper the drift. It changed you, being joined to somebody on that kind of level, suddenly understanding them in a way you'd never understood anybody but yourself. How could it not? It was intimate as hell, all the sex you weren't technically supposed to be having in the cadet barracks at sixteen without any of the mess afterward.

And it made you close. Once you found somebody who was compatible, man, whatever half-assed handshakes you'd managed to cling to for fifteen seconds with the rest of your class faded into nothing by comparison—like, looking at people's faces from the outside, trying to guess what they were thinking, was some old flatscreen, right? And the first time you managed to trip and fall into the drift was a full sensory sim, sure. But drifting with somebody who was compatible, _proper_ compatible? That was _real_ , right there in the heart of you, where you lived.

So yeah, of course partnered pairs fell in love a lot. "Drift-induced limerence", whatever—you lived together, ate together, slept in the same room; moved like one person, read each other's minds. Of course you fucking fell in love.

It didn't always stick. Being in love was like that, no matter what tipped you over the edge to start with. But it mattered. It meant something.

Just Jake's luck, that Nate would turn out to be the exception to the rule.

 

*

 

Jake's almost eager to get inside his new quarters and shut the door behind him. Alone at last.

He takes a look around, runs a hand over the clean impersonal shatterdome uniforms hanging up in the closet—impersonal except for all the ways they aren't, all the ways everything about a shatterdome is personal to Jake. He stares at the emblem sewn to them, feeling his chest get tight, and then turns away and flops down onto the bed.

Just as firm as he remembers. Man, his back's going to be fucking killing him in a day or two, getting used to this thing.

He gazes up at the ceiling and lets out a long slow breath. Nothing to do but think about it, and he's got no reason not to—nobody to see. Besides, he'd better get his head on straight before he has to look Nate in the face again.

Nate. What a kick in the head, Jake thinks, closing his eyes. _I didn't believe it when they told me you were inbound_ —hah. At least Nate had had some goddamn warning.

What utter bullshit. Nate and his stupid expressionless face, all that "Ranger Lambert" crap—as if that was all he was to Jake, all Jake was to him. Jake hadn't punched him in the eye for it, but it had been a damn close thing for a second there. As if they hadn't gone on midnight ice cream raids together, hadn't been each other's lookouts during cadet prank wars, hadn't known each other better than _anybody_ ; as if they hadn't even been friends, let alone—

As if none of it mattered to Nate at all.

Jake pinches the bridge of his nose, feels the dull ache of a headache just starting to creep up.

He can handle this. He can.

If only Nate weren't still so fucking hot.

Fuck.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Everything is fine.

Why wouldn't it be? Nate can handle late-night ice cream—even late-night ice cream that comes with a side of Jake swanning around in his goddamn bathrobe. If Jake doesn't want to be here, well, that isn't any more or less than Nate should've been expecting. And if he's willing to nod and smile and agree with Nate in front of the cadets, at least until they all get replaced by Shao's drones, that's a win. There's nothing more Nate could possibly ask for.

But telling himself that doesn't do a whole lot to counter the way his gut goes cold when he learns Mako's requesting Gipsy Avenger as her honor guard for the PPDC summit.

It's Jake who tells him, because of course it is. Just tossing it in, conversational, as if it's no big deal. Nate's saying something, afterward he can't even remember what, about Jake and his—his unexpected talent for standing still and shutting up, maybe, when Jake passes a whole session with the cadets without interrupting Nate even once. And Jake looks at him, level, smiling a little in that smug untouchable way where it's not really a smile at all, and says, "Oh, tell me what you really think, Ranger Lambert. Or, wait, don't bother," and Nate's already rolling his eyes, about to walk away, when Jake tacks on, "Hardly worth the effort to say it out loud, when we're going to be drifting anyway."

And all the words fall out of Nate's head at once, except the one that falls out of his mouth: "What?"

"Gipsy Avenger," Jake says, already looking away. "We're taking her out. Mako's orders."

It's the truth. Not that Jake would lie about it—about other stuff, sure, he'd say whatever he wanted just to fuck with Nate; but not about piloting a jaeger. Maybe he'd misunderstood, though, Nate tells himself. Maybe he was wrong.

But when he leaves Jake there, walking out without replying, the first thing he does is go find Mako, and she blinks at him and says, "Nate! I was looking for you," and shit.

He swallows, and Mako's eyes go narrow.

"Jake said something, didn't he?"

"Yeah," Nate agrees, on autopilot, and Mako sighs and smiles, barest twitch at the corner of her mouth, at the same time.

"I should have known," she murmurs, mostly to herself. "I meant to tell you myself—I'm sorry, Nate."

"What for?"

The slant of Mako's mouth turns wry, knowing. "He probably wasn't very diplomatic about it," she says, and then reaches out to wrap one hand around Nate's. "But it would mean a great deal to me, to have Gipsy Avenger there. I won't make it an order—"

"You don't need to," Nate tells her, because it's true. "All you ever have to do is ask."

And the way she smiles at him then makes it feel like maybe this might actually be worth it.

 

*

 

The thing is, Nate's not even sure what to brace himself for.

He doesn't know what the worst outcome would be. Maybe they've both changed so much they can't even do it anymore, can't form a stable handshake. It happens like that sometimes, Nate knows. It used to be a bigger problem, pilots getting separated—injuries, trauma, keeping one off-duty and struggling for so long that when they saw each other again they were like strangers, barely compatible. Once the PPDC caught on, policy changed; but with Nate and Jake, under these circumstances? It's possible.

Or—or maybe they haven't. Ten years, yeah, but maybe it still isn't quite enough to have put them out of step with each other. Nate thinks about trading snide remarks with Jake in front of the cadets, about the kitchen. Jake had known when he was about to try to talk, sprayed a little more whipped cream to interrupt him. Over and over, and his timing had been perfect; if it had been bo staves instead of dessert, that would've counted as at least three hits.

Maybe it's going to be just as good as it ever was. Maybe they're going to fit together just as perfectly as they always did.

Maybe drifting with Jake again is going to be the first time Nate's come home in ten fucking years.

 

*

 

He doesn't waste time panicking about it. He's a ranger, he knows how to keep his cool in shitty situations. When he's finally standing there, slotted into Gipsy's familiar connpod next to Jake, he doesn't look over and he doesn't freak out. He takes deep breaths, he clears his mind, and he lets the drift take him.

It might even help, in some ways. He's got a little extra incentive not to chase the RABIT, after all, because the absolute last thing he needs is Jake reliving the aftermath of Jake's dismissal, the moment Nate had learned about it and what he'd done after, projected in high-definition across the insides of both their heads. He makes himself empty, thinks of nothing, lets the thoughts and impressions and memories flowing through the drift slide right through him. And once they've got a firm handshake going, he picks something to keep running on a loop in the back of his head, and he sticks to it.

And if it happens to be the thought of how satisfying it would be to get back into a kwoon combat room with Jake, well, it's not like it's not the truth. Nate had caught the biggest growth spurt first, out of the two of them, and at sixteen he'd just been starting to get the hang of it, learning to turn his new height and reach into an edge he could use against Jake; at twenty-six, he's pretty sure he's still taller, even if it's just by an inch or two. But Jake is—Jake was always more comfortable in his own skin, his own body, than Nate. And Nate _does_ want to know how it would play out now, stripping down and getting a staff in his hands, seeing whether he could pin Jake to the mat beneath him or—or whether Jake'd pin him first—

Kicking Jake's ass. Kicking Jake's ass. That's the point, and Nate repeats it to himself until everything else goes away, because he sure isn't going to have anything else to think about when their only job in Gipsy is to stand there.

Except it doesn't stay that way.

When the rogue jaeger comes up out of the ocean in Sydney, for an instant Nate is almost relieved. Not that somebody is attacking them with stolen PPDC tech, that part hacks him off and worries him in pretty much equal measure; but just to get attacked—to be fighting, to have nothing else in their shared minds except the next movement.

And then Mako's helicopter goes down.

Jake's desperation is Nate's, then, so immediately and so thoroughly that there's no distinction. They lunge; they fall short. The metal side of the helicopter scrapes the outstretched tips of their fingers, ten thousand things trying to catch their attention in the HUD and Mako's face through that fucking window the only thing they can see. And then Mako falls, and so do they.

Right up until the moment Jake pulls that helmet off, it's—it's them, the two of them. All of it: the tight throat, the stinging eyes, the yawning gaping dread cracking straight through the chest, it's all—they're both doing it, feeling it, precisely equal.

For a split second, as Jake disengages, some distant part of Nate is thinking that maybe it'll help. Maybe if Jake just breaks the handshake, takes all this stuff back when he does it, Nate won't have to feel it.

He waits for it to work, and waits, and then he realizes Jake's already jerked free, about to climb out of the cracked connpod, that it's—it didn't do shit. And he shouts for Jake to wait, because he can't help it; but he's almost glad when Jake doesn't listen, so he can kneel there in the connpod alone with his teeth in his hand, biting down into the side of his palm so he can't sob out loud over his sister—their sister— _Mako_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

During their meeting with the marshal, Jake's still pretty much on autopilot, watching himself from a weird sort of distance.

It's—it's all so fresh it almost doesn't hurt. Or hurts so much he can't feel it, or something. Out in the hallway, looking at the memorial, Jake had felt oddly conscious of his own dry face, that he should have been crying, screaming, splitting his knuckles on the wall; but all he'd been able to think, staring into Mako's digitized eyes, setting the picture in place below, was that he was really goddamn tired.

And now it's—everything has just kept going. Some part of him is sure the world should have stopped the same way he has, on the inside; that everyone should have gone home, drawn their curtains, lain down in the dark and waited for it to be tomorrow.

Drifting with Amara like that had been damn stupid, the way things were in his head. Except maybe—maybe that was half the reason it had worked so well. Her RABIT, the way she'd felt as a kid standing there and losing her family, five seconds all it took to put a hole in her heart that was never quite going to heal: yeah, Jake reckons the insides of their heads had been pretty fucking compatible. Amara knows what it's like to have the world end, even when it's mercilessly still spinning.

Because it is. Things are still happening, problems to solve and Obsidian Fury to track, and almost before he knows it he's in the marshal's office listening to Gottlieb try to figure out Mako's last message.

And then he looks across the room at Nate, and slowly, belatedly, as if from a little way away, it occurs to him that he—he just left Nate in Gipsy, tore free of the handshake and ran without looking back. Probably had given Nate a hell of a lot of spillover, drift echo, whatever they're calling it these days.

Or—probably had given _Ranger Lambert_ a hell of a lot of spillover, which was indefinably worse. Nate, Jake could have asked for a little understanding; or wouldn't even have had to ask. Nate, Jake could have said sorry to, and he might even have meant it.

Ranger Lambert? Not so much.

And Ranger Lambert can hardly blame Jake for being a mess. But—

But maybe, possibly, Jake owes him a little bit of an apology anyway.

 

*

 

It's harder to track Nate down after the meeting than Jake is expecting. He's not in his quarters, he's not with the cadets, he's not overseeing the repairs and cleanup for Gipsy.

But if Jake weren't looking for Nate, he'd—he'd just be lying in his own room staring at the wall, probably. He doesn't mind having something to do.

A dim memory comes to Jake of how Nate had liked to climb up to the very top of the jaeger bay, back in the shatterdome in Alaska; not the engineering platforms, not the loading area, but way up top, almost hanging off the frame that shaped the dome, where nobody else ever went. _You can see everything from up there_ , Nate had told him once, _but nobody can see you._

He'd flushed a little after he'd said it, and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, telling Jake to forget it. But Jake hadn't done it, because even back then he hadn't been any good at taking orders from Nate. It hadn't been long after the first time they'd drifted, Jake still high off the rush of—of _discovering_ Nate, who'd so abruptly been rendered all at once in three dimensions, full color, by that perfect compatible handshake. And it had made sense to Jake, in a way: Nate could be sort of shy, strangely cautious. Which had been at total odds with what a suckup he was in class, always volunteering and saluting and keeping his shoulders ranger-square, but at the time that had only made it more interesting. Something Jake knew that other people couldn't guess just looking at Nate; precious, a secret.

Jake had been a sentimental dumbass at sixteen.

But he still remembers what Nate said, and when he climbs way up into the highest struts of Moyulan, over even Gipsy's head, that's where Nate is.

And the thing is, that's who he finds. It's not any fucking Ranger Lambert, crouched up there with his hands wrapped so tight around rebar that his knuckles are white, red-faced, eyes wet. It's—it's Nate.

Jake stares at him. After the way Jake's been going through the motions today, watching himself do it with none of it actually touching him, being thrown off-balance by this—by _Nate_ —suddenly makes him feel wrongfooted, almost defensive. Like it's some kind of attack, the way Nate twists to look at him, startled; like it's fair to want to hit back.

"Wow, that must've been some spillover," Jake hears himself say, too flatly for it to be anything but unkind.

And Nate stares at him for a second, blank, and then laughs a little—shakes his head, looks away, and curls a hand around the back of his neck. "Yeah, sure. Spillover," he says quietly. "Right. Because it's not like we were drifting twice a day for a year or two there or anything. I knew Mako as well as you did, ten years ago. I looked at her and I saw my sister—"

"When you were sixteen, yeah," Jake snaps, because sure, he remembers what it was like with the three of them—the in-jokes Nate had known without even thinking about it, memories of Jake's he could reference even though he hadn't been there when they happened, the times he'd hugged Mako without thinking or wished her a happy birthday or teased her about haircuts he'd never seen her get.

But that was a long fuckin' time ago, and there's no reason why Nate shouldn't have written it off along with all the rest of Jake.

Except when Nate looks up at Jake, that's not what the expression on his face says. "And then we spent ten years in the PPDC together. _You're_ the one who left, Jake. We didn't quit talking to each other just because you quit talking to us. Jesus—" He stops short, then, and squeezes his eyes shut, rubs the back of his wrist against his forehead. "Watching her die in your head," he says, real low, "didn't hurt any worse than watching her die in my own."

Jake swallows. After he got kicked out it had become habit, fast, to not let himself think about where Nate was or what he was doing, whether he was still happy in the program without Jake—or happier. Because—

Because it didn't matter. No reason it should. Nate probably hadn't been thinking about him any, either. Or at least he'd told himself that, alone late at night, pressing on the bruise just to see whether it still hurt and then pressing on it harder anyway.

He looks at Nate and Nate's looking back, and he must see Jake's surprise because all at once he's started to laugh wetly. "Goddamn," he says, almost light, wiping his cheeks with steady hands. "You're really stupid sometimes, you know that?"

"So's your face," Jake says, automatic, and Nate shakes his head and laughs again.

It's not that he doesn't have any warning. The way Nate goes quiet, then, and stands, crossing the pair of metal beams separating him from Jake—the look on his face, the way he hesitates with a hand half-outstretched. And Jake does tense up, but he doesn't leave, doesn't get the hell out of there, and a second later it's too late.

"I'm sorry," Nate says, very low. "Jake—"

"Shut up," Jake says instantly, because shit. Shit, no, this is not what he needs—he can feel it already, cracks splitting through the ice, and he doesn't want this, he doesn't want to _feel_ this—

But of course Nate doesn't fucking listen. "Jake," he says again, still being terribly, mercilessly gentle about it; and he does reach out, catches Jake by the arm and is suddenly way too close. "Jake, I'm so sorry," and when he wraps his other arm around Jake's shoulders, Jake squeezes his stinging eyes shut and lets it happen.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jake doesn't make much noise.

Nate remembers that, all at once. Jake cried like this when he was a cadet: almost silent, breath coming fast, not letting you get a good look at his face; the only way to know was to be touching him, to feel the way he shook with it.

Nate had hugged him then, too, not knowing what else to do. It's familiar except in all the ways it isn't, to hold Jake while he falls apart—Nate's done it before, yeah, but not with _this_ Jake, this taller broader closed-up Jake who smiles at Nate without meaning it.

But they drifted. They drifted, and Jake's mind feels just as full and real and effortless, just as _right_ , as it always did to Nate. So maybe this Jake's not really so different from the one Nate used to know after all.

Nate couldn't touch him on the tarmac, couldn't let himself; and he didn't in the kitchen either, standing there while Jake fistbumped him in the chest and walked away and carefully not doing anything about it. But now they're—Jake is here, letting Nate press him close with an arm around his shoulders, other arm still trapped between them with his hand on Jake's wrist, face turned into the curve of Nate's neck, and god, god, after this shitshow of a day it feels so fucking good to just hang on and hold each other up.

Nate closes his eyes, too, turns his cheek in against Jake's temple and digs his fingers into Jake's solid strong shoulder. There's nothing to say about it, nothing to do. Mako's dead and they can't fix it, and it hurts so much that it probably won't ever quite stop.

They stay like that for a while, for Nate doesn't even know how long. Eventually Jake isn't sobbing silently against him anymore but just—just breathing, hot and a little shaky against the side of Nate's throat. His arm is around Nate, too, hand fisted in Nate's shirt, though Nate can't quite remember it happening.

And then Jake draws back. Not far, barely any distance at all; Nate's eyes are still closed, wet eyelashes sticking, but he can feel Jake just fine, held within the circle of his arm, cheek rasping a little against the stubble coming up along Nate's jaw. Jake turns into him, not away, and—and kisses him.

Just at the corner of his mouth, at first. Slow, too, and gentle, unforced. It's—it doesn't feel any more deliberate than the way Jake's cheek happened to brush Nate's a moment ago. It certainly isn't hot, not by a long shot; Nate's head is aching, his eyes scratchy, his whole face red and damp. This has got to be the least attractive Nate's been, in approximately the absolute least sexy scenario, since he turned nineteen and finally quit getting so much acne.

But he doesn't move away from it. It feels like a comfort, Jake's mouth against his like this: not asking anything, not expecting anything, not going anywhere. Just there, the same way Jake's fingers are curled into Nate's shirt or Nate's hand is curving over the line of Jake's shoulder.

They had—they had kissed just this way, sometimes, in the barracks in the dark; after Jake had had a fight with Marshal Pentecost, or Nate had gotten yet another stiffly disapproving letter from his mom.

And for a second, Nate just forgets. He forgets they haven't done this in ten years, forgets they're not supposed to be anything to each other anymore. Every second since that helicopter first started to slew in the air has been a waking nightmare, and the only thing he wants is to be close to Jake, to feel like everything won't stay this fucking terrible forever. So he forgets, and he leans into Jake's steady warmth and kisses back just as slowly.

Funny—at sixteen, he'd hated it when he felt like Jake was trying to be careful with him. But now it's—

—not supposed to be happening. Shit.

He jerks back way way too late, and maybe a half-second behind Jake, who's taking an unsteady half-step away from Nate and swallowing, staring.

"Okay," Jake says, sounding distantly stunned, "now _that_ was stupid." And before Nate can even agree, he's already turned away—moving with quick strides to the uneven half-ladder of struts and angled metal beams that brought him up here, and then he's lowering himself down, and then he's gone.

 

*

 

Nate stays up there by himself for a little while longer, just trying to get his head around it.

Jake obviously hadn't meant to do it. Not that he'd tripped and fallen on Nate's mouth, but—but he'd forgotten too, maybe. Nate had thought it himself: they hadn't been that close to each other in ten years, and there had been so much that was suddenly familiar about it, known and comfortable, on a day when basically everything else was shit. Jake hadn't been kissing him with intent, hadn't been angling to make him mad or embarrass him. Nate can guess that much from the way Jake's face had looked after.

So—so, okay. It doesn't have to be a big deal, at least as long as they don't make it one.

And once he's talked himself through it and climbed back down, headed to the barracks and found the cadets fighting—he's got the perfect opportunity to make that clear to Jake. He's not even sure what it is that tips him off that Jake's behind him, a stray sound or a prickle at the back of his neck, or—or hell, maybe they _are_ still coming down off a bit of drift echo, after the way that handshake broke.

But whatever the reason, he knows Jake's there, and he chooses his words carefully. _No matter what they do, no matter how stupid they may act sometimes, you forgive them. And you move on._ It isn't even just about today, about letting Jake know that that particular bit of bad judgment doesn't have to be an issue. Ten years ago, Jake had done something pretty goddamn stupid, too; but Nate's done wanting to punish him for it. This is bigger than Nate's fucking hurt feelings now, Mako and Obsidian Fury and all of it, and the sooner they set it all aside, the better.

Especially when they're about to have to take Gipsy out again.

 

*

 

It's easier the second time.

Easier—better. Spectacular. God, they always fit each other so much better than they ever fit anybody else; Nate had almost forgotten what it was like, ten years of telling himself it couldn't be as good as he remembered, that he was just exaggerating it all to himself because—

Because he missed Jake. Because Jake was gone and not coming back, and everything was shit, and eulogies are always full of superlatives, good memories, praise. Because he was probably putting Jake on a pedestal, refusing to _let_ anything else measure up.

But Jake's here, right beside Nate in the connpod, and it turns out nothing does measure up. Nothing could.

It takes a while for them to reach the abandoned facility in the ice, a while before Obsidian Fury shows up. And just the two of them in Gipsy, striding through the snow, drifting—there's a lot of time to think.

Emotions don't come with labels in the drift, with names scrawled on the tags sticking out of their collars. Nate's pretty sure that sense of tentative calm, that quiet resignation, is him; and probably that soft free-floating regret, too, that bittersweet wistfulness, with its edge of muted longing. He'd almost be embarrassed, except he can't find anything in there that looks like Jake noticing, Jake's anger or resentment or even just dismay.

So—so, okay, maybe Jake is still feeling kind of numb over Mako. Maybe some of that regret is his, some of that hard-earned and carefully balanced equilibrium. Usually it's a little bit easier to guess what's Jake's and what's his, but after Mako, the kissing—maybe they're both just trying to find their feet again.

And then Obsidian Fury shows up, and there's nothing to think about except the fight. That good old slide move comes back to Nate the second the thought occurs to Jake, and for a minute there it's like they were never apart at all. If Shao's drones come online when they're scheduled to, this could—this could be the last time Nate's ever in a jaeger with anybody; and all of a sudden, he's fiercely, helplessly glad that it's with Jake.

 

*

 

Except it isn't the last time at all.

The drones are full of kaiju bits, which is one hell of a kick in the head, and the wreck they make of Moyulan, how little time it takes for them to do it, is frankly fucking terrifying.

But they're all that lies between the three kaiju who make it through and the end of the world. A handful of jaegers, cadets who've never piloted anything outside a sim, and Gipsy Avenger.

And it's funny, but the moment that motherfucker's tail slices Nate open, he's—he's almost expecting it. Lucky, really, that the handshake's three-quarters broken, because what he's thinking right then isn't anything Jake needs to hear: of course. Of course it's him. Of course he's fallen down on the job, right when Jake needs him the most, and of course Jake's going to go on without him.

That's how this works. Jake always had such a chip on his shoulder about being good enough, and Nate never knew how to tell him he already was. He got kicked out of the program and just kept going, made a new life for himself and never looked back; he's always been fine without Nate. It's Nate who's fucked without Jake, who's never been the same without him even after all this time, who can't quit hanging on to something that should have been over ten years ago.

It's Nate who gets left behind.

But he's not sixteen anymore. He's not going to pitch a fit about it, not going to beat his hands bloody against the walls of the cadets' barracks, not going to quit drifting for six months. Jake doesn't need him, never did, and even after ten years doing everything under the sun _except_ handling a jaeger, Jake's still the better pilot. "I'm going to get the hell out of your way," Nate tells him, and then does it, and even as he's lying there aching, watching Gipsy walk away from him with Jake inside, he knows it was the right decision.

Hurts; but then he's got a hole in him and he's bleeding everywhere, so pretty much everything he's doing right now hurts. He can take it. Least he can do, while Jake's busy saving the world.

And at the absolute minimum, he still gets to cold-cock Geiszler. That part is pretty sweet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jake keeps his head in the game while there's still time on the clock, because there's no other option with the entire planet on the line.

But lying in the snow with Amara after, laughing and also maybe crying just a little, a bunch of things he'd deliberately been ignoring come snapping back into focus, and one of them is the throb in his side. Funny wavering feeling to it—not any of the half-dozen injuries he actually does have. It's drift echo. It's Nate's.

Almost enough to make him like it. Knowing it's Nate's, having something that tangible, even if it is this persistent hot agony. A transport from Moyulan comes for them, with a couple salvage rigs behind for whatever's left of Gipsy, Scrapper, and by then even the parts of Jake that weren't injured are starting to complain, exhaustion setting in.

But he can't fall asleep on the transport. He closes his eyes, and Amara's leaned up against his side and gone limp; he puts an arm around her shoulder and squeezes, and feels her squeeze back before she pretty much passes out right there. But he can't follow her. He sits there listening to the thrum of the transport, the roar of wind, and can't do anything but think about Nate.

He must be okay. Right? He got Geiszler, Jake knows that much—the transport crew was already talking about it when they arrived. So he's still alive, and the PPDC must not have wasted any time going to pick him up, and they're going to take care of him. Even if he's no good at taking care of himself, the stubborn asshole. Dragging himself around Tokyo, up fuck knows how many flights of stairs, to get to Geiszler. Or maybe not; it makes Jake snort helplessly, imagining Nate all grimy and scraped up, calmly taking the elevator sixty floors to appear behind Geiszler with a _ding!_ —but even that isn't anything Nate should've been doing with an open wound in his gut.

Guess Jake's not the only one with a habit of acting stupid.

Jake swallows.

They—they hadn't really had time to talk about the whole kissing thing, after. He's not an idiot, he'd been picking up what Nate had been putting down with that little speech to the cadets about family, forgiveness. And climbing in Gipsy afterward had given Jake the perfect opportunity to see exactly how much Nate meant it: because of course he had, with all the upstanding ranger-ready honor he had in him. He wouldn't have used Mako's own words for anything less. He hadn't felt pissed off, as far as Jake could tell, or frustrated, or even—

Or even like he was expecting anything, waiting for anything. They're friends again, Jake's pretty sure; the way Nate had said _I knew you could do it, brother_ , the quiet solid faith in his voice. But in the drift, Nate hadn't felt like he was looking for more. At Severnaya Zemlya, his mind had been so clear. Jake had felt tangled up in knots, spilling over with cool regret and soft wistfulness, no matter how hard he tried to underline it all with acceptance—because Nate was willing to forgive him for the whole kissing thing, and they were finally on the same page, and Jake wasn't going to look that gift horse in the mouth if he could help it.

Jake lifts his free hand and rubs tiredly at the bridge of his nose.

Whatever Nate had been getting, he hadn't held it against Jake. Fighting Obsidian Fury together, they'd been—beautiful, perfect, exceptional. There were so many things about the cadet program, about Dad, that had chafed at Jake when he was sixteen; but jesus, just drifting with Nate had been enough to make the whole goddamn thing feel worth it, even on the bad days, and ten years hasn't changed that one bit.

That's how he spends the trip back to Moyulan, in the end: sitting there, head tipped back against the metal wall of the transport, thinking helplessly about Nate. Who's going to be fine, and they're friends again, and if Jake is maybe still a little bit stupid in love with him, well, Nate promised to forgive him for doing stupid things, so maybe that's okay. Maybe Nate won't mind too much.

Because if Jake couldn't get over Nate with ten years to do it, he sure as fuck isn't going to be able to pull it off now.

 

*

 

The thing is, that maybe isn't the most helpful thought to have in his head when he does see Nate again.

It's not hard to find Nate in the medbay, once they get to Moyulan. Jake gets pretty much dragged there anyway, even though there's nothing wrong with him that painkillers, a few stitches, and a good night's sleep won't fix; and once he's convinced the actual doctor of that, he can go ahead and look around.

There's still a whole lot of triage cases from the drone attack, in much worse shape even than Nate. And Nate, Jake figures, knows that, too—and he's exactly the kind of stand-up, dutiful ranger to have—yep. To have found himself a place to sit back against a wall, instead of taking up a bed. Jesus, Jake thinks fondly.

He looks like shit. There's still kind of an unfortunate amount of blood on him, because whoever was looking after him had been worried more about patching the leaks than cleaning him up, and his mouth is pressed into a flat little line, his brow furrowed. He looks a little grim and a lot tired, and—

And Jake's never wanted to kiss him so badly.

He manages not to do it, though it's a close thing for a second; he hurries over and drops down next to Nate, and Nate's not tracking all that well so it takes him a few seconds to realize. He looks up at Jake and blinks once, twice, and the way his face softens, the light that comes into his eyes, makes Jake's chest impossibly tight.

And then Nate draws a slow breath, and seems to—to fold in on himself, just a little, expression going remote, arm wrapped around himself like he's bracing for something he thinks will hurt. "Hey," he says quietly.

Jake clears his throat, suddenly awkward. "Hey," he says, and then fumbles for something to follow up with that won't sound stiff and weird. "You okay?"

"Sure, yeah," Nate says, and then when Jake raises an eyebrow at him, amends it: "I will be. You?"

"Yeah," Jake says, "walking around and standing up and everything." He aims finger guns at Nate and winks, big and cheesy; and Nate rewards him with a slant of the mouth, a huff that's almost a laugh through his nose.

And that makes it easier, somehow, for Jake to settle a careful hand on Nate's shoulder. Nate's warm and solid under his palm, and for the first time since Jake watched him eject from Gipsy, some desperate knotted-up thing in Jake's chest is soothed. Leaving him back there in Tokyo, when for all Jake knew he might have been bleeding out—because telling Jake he was fine, to go without him and not worry, when he was perfectly well aware he was about to fucking die sounds like exactly the kind of thing Ranger Lambert might do, that asshole.

Jake leans in, tips their bloodied foreheads together, and for a second he thinks maybe—Nate doesn't move away from it, is the thing. This close, his closed eyes are a blur, nothing but a smudge of eyelashes, and he reaches up with one hand and clasps the back of Jake's neck, breathing out shakily against Jake's cheek.

But when Jake murmurs, "So, you're never allowed to do that ever again, yeah?" Nate swallows with an audible click and immediately lets go, drawing his hand back and letting his head drop, pressing his cheek to the wall.

"Sure," Nate tells the floor, noncommittal. "Must be people looking for you."

Jake bites his lip, trying not to feel stung and kind of failing. He wants to say it's nothing that can't wait, that he's got nowhere to be that's more important than sitting here watching Nate fall asleep; but Nate must know that, or he wouldn't have given Jake such a big fat clue that he didn't care.

But then Nate's probably tired. Right?

"Sure, yeah," Jake says aloud, and then, hoping Nate will at least look at him again, "I'll come back, though. Bring you some ice cream."

And that, at last, does bring Nate's eyes up, and the corners of his mouth are tugging wide besides. "Ice cream," he repeats, dry, level.

"With lots and lots of toppings," Jake promises solemnly, and Nate shakes his head, grinning, and then throws a stray bit of clean gauze at Jake's head.

 

*

 

So Nate's going to be okay, and also wants to be left alone. That's fine. Jake's got plenty to do—people _do_ want to talk to him, what has to be half the shatterdome trying to shake his hand at once, and he hasn't eaten in what feels like about a year, and of course it's only a matter of time before somebody takes over the shatterdome speaker system and every bottle of booze in the whole place is getting lined up in the messhall.

The music is exactly how Jake likes it, pounding loud enough that nobody can hear the lyrics and the beat's got him by the bones. And this is—this is the better of any house party Jake ever ended up in the middle of back in California, throwing Dad's name around like that was all it was good for; everything he used to need to know he was about to have a night to remember.

So it doesn't make any sense that the more buzzed he gets, the less he feels like celebrating. He just—he can't stop thinking about it. All the alcohol seems to be doing is making it harder for him to forget how bad he wishes Nate were here, how much he wants to be wherever Nate is.

He shakes his head at himself and tips the beer he's got in his hand the rest of the way back, finishing off the last swallow. And then he sets down the empty with a decisive clunk that's utterly drowned out by the bass line shaking the walls, and ducks half a dozen flailing elbows to make it to a door.

He did say he'd be back with ice cream; Nate can't claim he wasn't warned. Jake makes it to the main kitchen within ten minutes, has everything he needs pulled together in another five. And with so many beds in the medbay occupied—odds are that Nate's back in his own quarters by now.

Sneaking into Nate's rooms in the dark with ice cream melting in his hands and his heart in his throat; it's all way too familiar for comfort. But luckily Jake is just drunk enough not to care.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nate startles helplessly at the faint scrape of his door opening.

He'd hoped Jake had meant it, that he really would show; which obviously meant he'd carefully spent the last five or six hours talking himself through how it wasn't going to happen, that Jake had plenty of people wanting to congratulate him and buy him a drink, and that Nate probably shouldn't expect to see him before tomorrow, and that that was fine.

He'd managed to find a position to lie down in that was halfway comfortable, and he'd shut the lights off and closed his eyes. And then he'd lain there, and lain there, and lain there, going helplessly in circles. Jake had leaned in and touched him, had been halfway to offering to stay—hadn't he? Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Best thing to do, really, to shut that whole train of thought down cold. They're friends now, and with Shao's drones mostly slag it'll be another year at least before human pilots become obsolete—and that's not counting whatever the PPDC's going to do with the knowledge that rifts can be opened from this side. So they'll be partners, maybe.

Unless, of course, Jake Pentecost, hero who prevented a second apocalypse, gets reassigned. Or even just retested, looking for a pilot with higher compatibility. Low odds, admittedly, since Jake and Nate had been right up there in the 98th percentile, but not impossible. Nate should—should try to be ready for it. That's the only reasonable thing to do, and Nate can't afford to be unreasonable about Jake Pentecost.

But now his door's slid wide, and somebody's darted in through it. "Jake?" Nate whispers into the dark, feeling his heart pound.

"How'd you know?" comes Jake's voice, from a lot closer than Nate had expected, sounding rough and tired and unfairly warm.

"Just a guess," Nate hears himself say, and Jake laughs; Nate can hear him feeling along the edge of the bed, hand a little clumsy, and then the dip of the mattress as his weight settles.

"Here, come on," Jake says, "sit up," and there's a clatter—setting something down? What was Jake carrying?—and then Nate has to suck in a breath and bite down on the wrong kind of noise as Jake's arm is suddenly around him, steady, lifting him carefully up. "There you go. Didn't pop your stitches?"

"What?" Nate says, and then belatedly remembers there's a hole in him. Funny; he hadn't felt it, with Jake holding him like that. "No, no, I'm fine." He hesitates. "Must be a hell of a party out there." The throb of the music is audible even in here, muffled but unmistakable.

"Yeah," Jake says, and he's let go of Nate but he's still close enough that Nate can feel it when he shrugs. "Not bad. But everything I need for a good time's in here," and Nate blinks into the dark, feeling his ears flush hot, a second before something cold and smooth is put in his hands.

A bowl. Ice cream. Nate laughs, a little strangled, and feels around absently for the handle of the spoon.

And Jake wasn't kidding about the toppings: the first spoonful tastes like nothing but sprinkles, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup.

"Nothing but the best," Jake says confidingly, through what sounds like a spoonful of the same, and Nate grins into the dark and can't convince himself there's anything he'd rather be eating.

It doesn't just taste good, it feels good; every scrape and bruise on Nate's body is stinging with heat, but the ice cream is sweet and cold. And steadily melting, which means the only reasonable strategy is to attack it with vigor.

But the closer Nate gets to the bottom of the bowl, the more a few other things start to make themselves apparent. Standard-issue beds in shatterdome quarters aren't very wide. Jake is—close, sitting beside Nate, the lengths of their thighs pressed together. Their arms, their elbows, the backs of their wrists, keep brushing as they eat.

Nate tries not to think about it. It doesn't really work.

Jake finishes his ice cream first. Nate can still barely see him in the dimness, but he can hear Jake's bowl being set down on the bedside table, and it makes him abruptly conscious of the clink of his spoon against his own bowl. Not that Jake can see him any better than he can see Jake, probably, but it's still weird, eating in front of somebody who isn't.

Nate hurriedly scrapes up the last bit of ice cream, a little of the leftover melted ice-cream-soup at the bottom, and then there's a moment of silence as he slides it into his mouth and swallows. And then he feels Jake's fingertips against his, Jake's hand under the bowl.

He's half-expecting Jake to take it and laugh, give him some line about the hour or beauty sleep and then leave, and he's belatedly sorry he didn't make that last spoonful stretch for half an hour. But it's gone and Jake doesn't move.

Doesn't move, and then does—but not to get up. Only to lean closer, settling one palm carefully over Nate's bandaged side, so lightly Nate hardly even feels it except for every way he does.

"It hurt," Jake murmurs, after a second. "A lot. The handshake was still—I could feel it. I could feel how bad it was."

And that's—Nate doesn't even mean to, only realizes he's put one hand over the back of Jake's when he feels the curves of Jake's knuckles under his fingers. "I'm going to be okay," he says.

Jake blows out a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. But right then I didn't. After what happened to Suresh, I was—I thought for a second—"

"Hey," Nate says, before Jake can take that any further, and he curls his fingers around Jake's and squeezes. "I'm fine. Jake—"

"I couldn't have done it," Jake's murmuring, nonsensical, grip tightening on Nate's hand. "I couldn't have. You have to know that. I couldn't—"

"You had Namani," Nate says, because he's not sure what else Jake might mean. "You'd have been able to do it. You didn't need me," and then, because he's put off saying it for way too long, "You—you never have."

"What?" Jake says, sounding thrown.

Nate swallows and squeezes his eyes shut. He's never told Jake this, never told Mako this; he's never told _anybody_. Even once he'd started letting them try to match him up to a new co-pilot, seventeen and bristling with resentment—he'd never had trouble with a RABIT because he'd never wanted to chase it, never wanted to relive the moment he'd understood what Jake had done and the way it made him feel. "With the Mark IV—"

"Nate—"

"That's what we were arguing about," Nate says over Jake, because he can't let himself get interrupted or this is never going to make it out. "You remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," Jake says, very quiet.

Nate shakes his head, feeling his eyes sting. "I was being stupid, I was—I just wanted you to say you needed me. You know that my family, my mom, she never—she didn't visit, didn't care when I got leave, didn't want me around. She'd write to me when her secretary reminded her, or when the PPDC sent her test scores or something."

"Nate," Jake says softly.

"I wanted you to say you needed me," Nate repeats, "and instead you went out there and got in that thing alone and gave yourself a brain hemorrhage. And then they kicked you out, and—" He stops, bites his lip and shakes his head, even though Jake probably can't see him do it. "Jesus, I was a mess. You didn't need me, you never needed me, it was—I needed you."

"Nate," Jake says again, and suddenly there's a palm against the line of Nate's jaw, the touch of Jake's forehead against his. "Is that what you think? You're even stupider than I am. You made it. Don't you understand that? Ten years in the PPDC, you're decorated, you're so good at what you do that they make you teach kids how to try to be you. And me, I—" He pauses, and Nate strains to pick out something through the dark, anything, that will tell him why, but all he's got is the silhouette of Jake's face, the warmth of Jake's hands on him. "You were the most important thing in the world to me," Jake says at last, hushed. "And you were so—you worked hard, you paid attention. You never screwed up. I had the scores but I didn't do the work; half the time everybody was telling me I was only there because of my dad and the other half they were telling me I was a Pentecost and I was going to be the best. I was going six directions at once, I never knew which way was up. I got used to it. I told myself I didn't care.

"And then I realized you mattered to me more than any of it. There was finally something I could lose, really _lose_ , and it scared the hell out of me. I didn't _want_ to need you, and I told myself I didn't, and I got in that Mark IV to prove it. Which was dumb as fuck," Jake adds thoughtfully, "because if anything it did the opposite. And then I spent ten years without you, and every single one of them was shit, and I'm never doing that again."

Nate drags in a shaky breath. He'd—he'd thought he had a year, at the most. If Jake still wanted to be partners, if Shao Industries didn't rush a new run of drones to production. But that's—that sounds like—

"Never," Jake repeats. "You understand?"

And Nate's the one who moves this time, because he can't stand not to.

For a second after he presses his mouth to Jake's, he's frozen—because even after everything Jake just said, there's still a stone-faced sixteen-year-old with bloody knuckles somewhere deep inside Nate, waiting to be told that Jake's left him behind.

But Jake doesn't push him off, and Jake doesn't move away. He inhales, sharp, against Nate's lips, and then suddenly he's tipping Nate's face up with one hand, leaning in over Nate, teeth sinking into the curve of Nate's mouth even though his other hand's resting so gently over Nate's wound. Nate gasps into it, lets his lips part and sucks Jake's tongue into his mouth, wraps his arm around Jake's shoulders, and hangs on tight.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jake wakes up in Nate's bed.

It takes him a minute to realize it: why he's so hot, why he feels so crowded—because these beds aren't made for two, and even stretched out, Nate's knees and ankles are bumped up against Jake's, one forearm pressed to Jake's chest, face a breath away from Jake's. His eyes are still closed, his mouth slack with sleep, and overnight the bruising on his face, his shoulder, has started to really come up purple, around the bandages.

He looks fucking beautiful.

The sun isn't up yet, but it will be soon, dim bronze glow starting to burnish the walls. Jake lies there and stares at Nate's stupid face, and he can feel the urge starting to sink its claws in, deep down—to sneak out, get away, tell himself he'd been drunk and he hadn't meant to say it, any of it.

Yeah. Right. Drunk, on two beers across like an hour; he'd been buzzed at the absolute most. Just enough to give himself an excuse to go find Nate the way he'd wanted to. And—and to say it, at last, because he'd wanted to do that, too. Listening to Nate, the things he'd been saying in that quiet shaky way, that Jake didn't need him—jesus. Like he hadn't been paying attention at all, Jake thinks fondly, like he'd bought all the bullshit Jake had ever tried to sell anybody about life in California: that it was good, that he was living it up, that he was happy. What a dumbass.

And then the sun finally does make it up far enough to suddenly fill the whole room with light, and when Jake quits blinking at the glare off the walls and looks at Nate again, Nate is blinking back at him. He looks dimly confused; and then startled, eyes rounding; and then a slow red flush starts to climb his face as he remembers. Because yeah, he'd been hanging onto Jake pretty tight at the end there, making half-swallowed sounds into Jake's mouth, clutching Jake's shoulders like he'd never let go.

Not that Jake had minded.

But maybe Nate doesn't know that. So Jake smiles at him, all slow and hot, and then says, low, "Good morning, Ranger Lambert."

Nate rolls his eyes, of course—but the corner of his mouth has hitched up a little, and he's still flushed but he doesn't look half as self-conscious about it.

And after everything they've both put themselves through over this, it turns out it's the easiest thing in the world, to reach out and wrap a hand around Nate's hip and ease up over him. Nate still wears a t-shirt and boxers to bed, it turns out—Jake hadn't been able to see for sure, last night.

"Jake," Nate says—a little warningly, but Jake can already make out the thickening line of his dick, which is totally on board.

"Promise I'll do all the work," Jake says, and he—he doesn't mean to, it's not the right move given the mood he's been trying to build, but he can't stop himself from pushing up onto his knees, freeing his other hand so he can rest it carefully over the biggest swathe of bandages crossing Nate's side. The last thing he wants is to have to watch Nate bleed again.

When he meets Nate's eyes again, he isn't smiling, and neither is Nate. Nate's just lying there looking up at him, thoughtful, intent, in a way Jake kind of wants to squirm away from and kind of doesn't want to ever stop. And then he reaches up, running careful fingertips along Jake's cheek, and when he says, "Jake," again, it's—it sounds different, this time.

Jake keeps his word, and leans down so Nate doesn't have to lean up. It feels stupidly good to have Nate under him like this, carefully caged in and definitely not going anywhere, and Jake feels something that had been strung tight in his shoulders start to ease.

They kiss for a long time. Jake doesn't entirely intend for it to happen that way, but once he's got Nate's tongue in his mouth it's kind of hard to stop. All at once there's just so much he wants to do, so much he can't get enough of: tasting the slick curve of Nate's lower lip, sucking on Nate's tongue until he groans into Jake's mouth, breaking away to lick a stripe along Nate's jaw or up the long stubbled line of his throat—

"Oh, god," Nate pants into his ear, "jesus, Jake," and Jake's only trying to move up, get a better angle to suck a mark into the soft skin under Nate's ear; the way his thigh slides up and presses against the hot line of Nate's cock is a surprise to him as much as it is to Nate.

And Jake laughs a little, breathless, at the way that makes him feel, because goddamn, he hasn't been this eager for it since—well, since he was sixteen, maybe. But Nate sounds like he's been struck, breath sucked in sharply, thighs clenching around Jake's and his back arching—

"Hey, hey," Jake says, sliding a hand under quick to help hold him up before he can tense so much he hurts himself. "Cut that out, dude, you're going to tear your stitches open."

"I can't help it," Nate says, gasping, throwing an arm across his face. "I can't—Jake, god, fuck. Please—please—"

And that is just—fuck. "Okay, okay," Jake says, "I got you. I got you. All right?"

He'd already managed to skim Nate's t-shirt up his chest, shoving it greedily out of the way so he could find more skin. And he's already got a hand at the small of Nate's back; it only takes a second to steady him, ease those boxers down his thighs—

Or it would if Nate hadn't suddenly got his hands in the way. "What—"

"No, come on, you too," Nate's saying, jerking at Jake's shirt until he gives in and raises his arms enough to let it slide off over his head.

"I wasn't exactly planning to abstain," Jake says, laughing, but the truth is he sort of had half-forgot about his own cock, hot straining weight against his thigh. It's a relief to shuck off his shorts, and when he settles back into place against Nate and wraps his hand around both of them, jesus, it feels fucking _spectacular_.

The way Nate's thighs are clenching against Jake's hips isn't half bad either—the way he throws his head back, the way his lip reddens as he bites it. He grabs Jake's wrist where he's holding himself up with one hand, gropes down with the other to help out, and Jake's shaking his head, saying, "Fuck off, I got this, I said I'd do the work!" even as the first pulsing wave overtakes him, which in retrospect is exactly how having sex with Nate was always going to end up: amazing, effortlessly hot, and full of arguing.

Jake manages to keep moving his hand for the extra fifteen seconds it takes Nate to follow after, the overstimulation blazing almost too bright to handle; and then he sinks down, careful, close enough to mouth the curve of Nate's shoulder while he catches his breath.

And it's only then that he notices Nate's still got a hell of a grip on his wrist. "Nate?" he murmurs, absently curious.

"So you're—you really are staying."

Jake frowns against Nate's unfairly impressive bicep, and levers himself up on one elbow far enough to meet Nate's eyes—or he could if Nate were looking at him. Which he isn't. "When I said I wasn't spending ten years without you again, I didn't mean, 'I'm looking forward to not seeing you for nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days', Nate."

Nate still doesn't look up.

"Nate," Jake says. "Nate. Na-ate."

Nate flicks him a glance, jaw tightening. And Jake would almost think it's just that he's annoyed, except there's something about his eyes, his eyebrows. He doesn't look angry—and Jake knows what Nate looks like when he's angry, so if anybody can tell, it's him.

Yeah, Nate doesn't look angry. He looks scared.

"Nate," Jake says again, more gently, and catches him by the chin. "That wasn't 'glad you're not dead, I'm about to take off' sex. That was 'we're a thing now and we're going to stay a thing unless I piss you off more than you can stand' sex. There are subtleties, I grant you, but they're really not that easy to mix up. You're being stupid."

And that, at last, makes Nate laugh a little, short huff through his nose, before he shakes his head and brings one hand up to cover Jake's. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Jake confirms. "But I figure it was your turn, by now, so don't feel too bad about it. I forgive you."

And Nate can't help but recognize the reference, just the way Jake meant him to: _no matter how stupid they may act sometimes, you forgive them_. He looks at Jake a little longer this time, searching, biting his stupid sexy lip; and then at last he smiles, tentative at first but then wider, wider, blinding. "Okay," he says, and Jake can't do anything with that but lean down in all this brand-new golden sunlight and kiss him again.

 

 


End file.
